GENIUS NY, The go to program for Start-Up ideas!

There are many people in the world who have various ideas for a start-up but, cannot go ahead with it due to the financial crisis! However, if you think you/your team have a genius idea in your mind and can get financial support for implementing your start-up idea, you can try pitching your idea to GENIUS NY.

Genius NY

What is GENIUS NY?

GENIUS NY stands for ‘Growing Entrepreneurs In Upstate New York.’ This is a 12-month program where the top five participants are awarded an investment up to $1 million in their start-up. It is funded by New York’s Empire State Development (ESD) and is held by Centerstate CEO’s The Tech Garden. A total of 80% of the total fund, which sums up to an amount of $3 million is provided to the top five teams. The winner gets $1 million and the runner-ups get $500,000 each. This program has completed its 2-year tenure and is all set to search for the 3rd set of winners.

The application date for GENIUS NY has been postponed from 1st October 2018 to 14th October 2018. Thus, all those people/teams who wish to apply for the GENIUS NY program can head over to its official website and fill out all the information for submitting your application.

What do the past winners have to say about GENIUS NY?

GENIUS NY?

Team Fotokite, which secured the 1st position for 2 consecutive years, is a Swiss-based start-up. The idea of this start-up was to develop a tethered drone system which allows a UAV to fully function autonomously for 24 hours by attaching it to a ground-based system through a kite-like component. This is the inspiration behind the name Fotokite.

Chris McCall, Fotokite CEO said “This is tremendous support from the GENIUS NY program and CenterState CEO and a total game-changer for Fotokite. We are excited to be expanding operations here to support our customers moving forward and will work hard to continue building on this early momentum. The other teams in the program have been great, and there are opportunities to work with them in the next phase of the GENIUS NY program.”

What were the runner-ups up to?

Team Quantify, which is a Michigan based start-up, secured the 2nd position and won $600,000 for its development on reducing the cost of parking and traffic analyses by using unmanned aerial systems with machine vision and analytics.

TruWeather, a Virginia based start-up grabbed the 3rd place and $400,000 for its attempt to refine weather intelligence and make it as accurate as possible through various drone technologies.

Should you apply for the GENIUS NY program?

Definitely yes! If you think you and your team have got what it takes to secure a place in the competition, you should fill the application which is available on GENIUS NY’s official website. The deadline for application of GENIUS NY is 14th of October, 2018.

However, Applications are restricted to business categories that align with the regional investment in unmanned systems only! Sectors included are hardware, software, data analytics, and IoT.

Thus, you must apply immediately if you have an idea and if you are interested in participating in this program.

How is the 12-month long program divided into phases?

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The 12-month long GENIUS NY program is divided into two phases! Namely, Phase 1 and Phase 2.

Phase 1- This phase lasts for 3 months and includes a $10,000 stipend pe month. It ends with a Business Pitch. After the phase 1, all the teams enter the phase 2 by default.

Phase 2- This phase lasts for the remaining 9 months. The points of interest of this phase are three Investor Demo Day’s for the investors from New York’s Empire State Development (ESD) program judges from Centerstate CEO’s The Tech Garden.

Conclusion:

If you are looking for a golden opportunity to begin your start-up, GENIUS NYis your platform to display your idea! Millions of dollars can be invested in your start-up idea if you are able to win this program. Also, if you manage to be amongst the runner-ups, you can mint a respectable amount for your start-up.

If you have any queries regarding GENIUS NY program, you can either directly contact the coordinators or leave a comment in the below. We will try our level best to answer your query.